


from the ashes

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Daisy backstory, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Season 2, background bus kids, background fitzsimmons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 12:40:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15557898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: Skye feels guilty about the growing divide between herself and Fitz after his injury, but when Jemma's departure leaves him distraught, she finally gets the courage to reach out.





	from the ashes

**Author's Note:**

> for a prompt on tumblr "Daisy being there for Fitz after Jemma leaves in S1/2". I hope you like it! 
> 
> plenty more platonic FitzDaisy goodness can be found in [this collection]() as well as several of my other fics, because I love these two. enjoy!

Skye was busy a lot these days: May was a tough S.O., and there was a lot to be done in the wake of the fall of Shield, with hundreds if not thousands of agents in the wind who had to be tracked down, identified, and protected or blacklisted depending on which way they had turned. She had been plunged into the thick of it, but at least now she had the confidence of Coulson, May and the team on her side. Other team members were not faring so well, and especially not Fitz.

When Skye had first found out what had happened, who had done it, she was just about sick with rage. Her instinct had been to barrel after Ward, if not physically, then online. Expose him. Send the full forces of Shield to hunt him down. But there were more important things for them all to be doing and surely one of those things was helping Fitz. He had not died, after all; simply had the life he’d known blown to shrapnel. The problem with that was, though, that nobody knew how to pick up the pieces. Not Fitz himself, certainly not Skye, and not even poor Jemma, who poured her heart and soul into trying to help him and found herself running up against brick wall after brick wall after brick wall. Everything she tried to do seemed to hurt or stress or betray him, and he was so frustrated with everything, including himself, that even if he could figure out how to do it better, he couldn’t articulate it to her. Skye could never have imagined them becoming so broken, and even when they did, she couldn’t imagine Jemma leaving. 

Then Jemma did. 

This had shattered what was left of Fitz. His life, his friends, his confidence in himself. All of it was awash in a mad storm and Skye knew all too well what it was like to be abandoned by somebody she was sure had loved her, in one way or another. She knew all too well what Fitz must be feeling: after all, Jemma had never given either of them a reason for leaving, had never even said goodbye. Skye had thought – and so had Fitz apparently – that she had just been headed off on a visit home, but then she’d dropped off the radar. Just like that. Fitz had torn himself up over it for weeks, and had come to the conclusion that she had given up on him, or been repulsed, or been scared off: that, for whatever reason, she had abandoned him. Skye had tried and tried to promise him that was not the case, but she couldn’t give him an alternative. If she were being honest, she was feeling quite abandoned too. 

Unfortunately, this didn’t really help her reach out to Fitz as much as she might like. He was feeling lower than he’d ever felt, and he was bitter and angry and horrifically depressed and honestly, Skye was worried about him, but if Jemma couldn’t help him, how could she? And it didn’t help that he struggled to communicate back, too. He was different to how he was before, and it unnerved Skye – it unnerved all of them – and though she was more ashamed by the minute to admit it, she knew the team was starting to abandon him too. They ignored him when he got upset, instead of trying to figure out why. They didn’t stop the lab techs from gossiping, or from avoiding Fitz in the hallways. They even started to avoid him themselves. It was cowardly, Skye knew, but what else was there to do? She was busy, she told herself. She was just too busy. 

But she loved her friend, and it hurt to see him, hear him, feel him in pain. She just needed a push in the right direction, to help her passion overcome her hesitation, and today was the day she received that push, in the form of a crashing sound. It could have been a mistake, she thought, but then it was followed by another, and a howl of anger and despair. 

It was coming from Fitz’s room, of all places, and Skye’s first thought was that he must be in danger so she ran up to his door with her heart in her throat. The smashes and thuds continued in a fairly regular pattern, with the occasional cursing and muttering and wordless screeches in between. Then there was a break. Perhaps he’d run out of things to throw around, but he seemed to be breathing heavily. Running out of momentum? Skye took a deep breath. It was now or never. 

She keyed in his code and the door slid open. 

Fitz turned to her and for a brief, brief moment she saw his body light up as if he thought that maybe, just maybe, it was Jemma coming home. When he saw that it was Skye, he froze up. There were books and clothes and sheets and instruments and souvenirs scattered about the place, some more broken than others, and he standing amongst it all. Helpless. Distressed. He held a plastic model Tardis in one hand, clenching and unclenching his fingers around it as if waiting for the fury and pain to bubble back up and inspire him to throw it to the ground, but it did not. It hovered below the surface, quelled by that brief moment of hope that all was not lost, and by the fact that Skye hadn’t turned and left him yet. 

“I don’t think you want to do that,” Skye offered. “You don’t want to break that, Fitz. Maybe put it down?” 

Fitz clenched his fist again, until he could feel the plastic straining against his fingers. Surely nothing would be such a satisfying cure to the tension beneath his skin, than to throw it into his dresser mirror, or similar. It probably wouldn’t break though, and his arm didn’t want to move anyway. Tension was turning to tears, overwhelmed by confusion and frustration and shame. 

“It’s okay, Fitz, I’m not going to take it off you,” Skye assured him. “I just… I understand. I understand why you’re mad, but this isn’t how you want to deal with it. I promise.” 

He nodded. She waited a beat and asked, 

“Can I come in?” 

Fitz retreated and sat on the side of his bed. Skye stepped through the carnage to join him, and he realised as a bitter taste settled on his tongue, that she was right. Littered across the floor were Academy shirts and jackets and books he and Jemma had once studied together. A little carved monkey on a keychain, a gift she’d bought him from their first trip to the Central Park Zoo. An old copy of the Hobbit, with some of its pages scattered – it hadn’t been faring well before this onslaught, when Jemma had read it to Fitz at his bedside. Seeing it finally broken brought tears to his eyes, and all he could think of was how much Jemma loved that book. What had he done?

Skye inhaled slowly, heavily, as she took in the wreckage of the room. Beside her, Fitz whimpered with regret and heartache and Skye began to feel herself fill with the same. She’d been doing quite well with denying how much she missed Jemma, by hiding in the betrayal of it all just as well as Fitz did sometimes, but the loose ends still stung sometimes. Especially since she’d hoped to be putting those days behind her – which was part of the reason she had come in here. She took Fitz’s hand, the one not still half-heartedly clinging to the Tardis, and intertwined his fingers with hers. She leaned into him, until the warmth and pressure soothed them both. 

“I don’t mean, like, you shouldn’t be angry,” she clarified solemnly. “I’m angry too, I get it. I know you loved her a lot and sometimes it feels like it was all some big joke and none of this is worth it anymore, right? It’s just- I’ve been there, and I wish somebody had stopped me.” 

“…From what?” Fitz asked, after a moment. 

Skye drew a deep breath and wiped the tears from her eyes. More came to take their place, but apparently it was going to be that kind of a moment, so she let them be this time.

“You know how I was… I was in the foster system when I was a kid. Some of the homes, they sucked, but some of them were great. They were really great. But even the great ones kicked me out. Sent me back. I mean, now I know it was Shield making them do it, to keep me safe or whatever, but it still- it still hurt, you know?” She sniffed again, suddenly feeling acutely like that little girl all over again. She squeezed Fitz’s hand and pushed on. It had been so long since she’d thought about this, and felt it all, that now she couldn’t stop. 

“One family, they bought me this camera,” she recalled. “Oh, it was beautiful. Way fancier than I knew anything about, so I spent _weeks_ reading the manual and watching these tutorial things, learning everything I could about it. Taking pictures of literally everything. We went on a camping trip, me and them and their son and daughter, and I documented it all on this camera and I was going to scrapbook it and everything. I finally thought I was part of something. But of course…” 

“They sent you back.” 

“Yeah.” Skye blinked. Closed her eyes for a moment, lost in the bittersweet memory of her last few moments of peace at that house. “As soon as we got home. I didn’t even get to unpack.

“So of course I was furious, and I smashed the camera and ripped the manual all up and everything and it wasn’t until way later, after I’d run away and was living alone in my van feeling sorry for myself one night, that I realised… I’d destroyed everything I had of the people that had loved me. That had taken me into their home, their family. I could have done photography for money, I could have even sold the parts, but that’s not what I missed. It was the photos. It was the whole thing, what it meant. It was gone. Forever. All because I’d been a bit too angry for a few too many seconds.

“I just- I didn’t want that to happen with you and Simmons. That’s all.” 

She cleared her throat and wiped her eyes, and glanced at Fitz’s other hand – the one around the Tardis. He lifted it from his lap, and put the Tardis down on the bed-sheets beside him, safely away from impulsive hands. In silence, Fitz took a few moments to let Skye’s story sink in, and then squeezed her hand. 

“Thank you,” he said. “I think- I think you’re right.” 

“I _hope_ I’m right,” Skye added. 

“Me too.” 

For a few more seconds, they sat in silence together, and then Fitz slid off the bed to the floor and began cleaning up the mess. As he cradled his precious copy of _The Hobbit_ and tried to slip its fallen pages back into place, he had to wonder if – and if so, how – it might ever be the same again. Maybe it wouldn’t, he realised, but at least now, he had Skye kneeling beside him to help pick up the pieces. Perhaps this didn’t need to feel quite so much like an ending after all.


End file.
